Audio Studies B : Major Assignment

The Monkey and the Walrus (2567)

Scott Philp

3 ‘ 25

Mp3 :

http://www.box.net/shared/nsjfimj8hv

This song is made up of only a few takes of real audio. The Piano was recorded with a stereo mic and two U87s sitting behind a baffle on either side of the Piano. This created a darker muted sound which suited the song. Also after recording the Piano I grabbed a snare drum and walked around the room playing it. This created a nice natural panning effect although the gain wasn’t really set for it so it peaked. However because I used it reversed under a lot of things it really didn’t seem to matter. The chorus and coda vocals were recorded with the mic on figure 8 and Jake and Brendan provided ‘backup’ however looking back I probably should’ve done the backup in another take so I could raise it up a bit. I used a single instance of Sample Tank 2 SE and routed two MIDI tracks into separate channels for the Brass lead and the strings sample. I then automated their volume levels and in the case of the brass lead the panning on the Aux track. To get the shaker I put reason on an Instrument track and then set the output to bus 1-2, then I set the input of an audio track to bus 1-2 and recorded it in real time. The Instrument track for reason was retained but made inactive, as it was easier to deal with the audio track. I used beat detective on one of the piano tracks to get an idea of where to put the reversed drum sounds before the coda and it actually worked reasonably well. It didn’t get the exact beats and bars right but in the end it was close enough that I could use grid mode to match up the reversed sample to something I had played straight to the audio. This is one of the only things I’ve mixed in Pro Tools LE for a while and it really showed up the difference in the quality of the plugins as opposed to the suite in Studio 1 and 2. The Piano was recorded with a dark sound in mind so I was pretty happy with it anyway so instead of using lots of plugins on the track I’ve mostly used volume and panning automation to create colour in the sounds. The reverb for the vocals however helped create a more spacious sound. The track wasn’t mastered separate I used a light compressor on the master track and then dithered it down to 16bit. The track is not exactly what was proposed as due to time constrains the original track I was going to do was used for the studio project. However the use of Pro Tools, Sample Tank and Reason remain at the same levels I had planned for the original song so I feel that I’ve still displayed the same amount of technical ability as proposed.